Mercer Crossing is situated in the LBJ Freeway and Colinas Crossing corridor, which is home to two million sf of office space. "Only when you bring it all together, do you have enough mass to create an entire subsector," says Wayne Swearingen, a principal in Vector Project Services LLC, which leases Mercer Crossing for developer Wayne Starr of Aspen, CO. He doesn't anticipate problems with his competitors.

"We're not going to say they're in Mercer Crossing. We're going to say they're in the Mercer subsector," Swearingen tells GlobeSt.com. The campaign will ramp up by week's end.

Mercer Crossing, says Swearingen, controls about 90% of the land in the area he's designating for the new submarket. He expects the label might take a year to catch on, but he's going to push it to give a stronger identity to the area. The Mercer Crossing property is in the heart of a tract that had been deeded to the Mercer family, dating back to 1838 when Sam Houston was president of the Republic of Texas. In fact, the acreage's abundance of hickory trees had been the motivating factor for the use of Hickory Centre for Mercer Crossing structures, according to Swearingen.

He says Mercer Crossing, for now, is ranked third in its corridor, trailing Park West and Colinas Crossing. That will change with time since Mercer Crossing will take about a decade to build out and has 950 acres of prime land to do it.

Come April, Constructors of Dallas will begin pushing dirt on a four-story, 102,000-sf office building that's identical with its Georgetown design to One and Two Hickory Centre, all situated off Valley View Road, just east of Luna Road. The three are considered the signature pieces while an eight-story, 221,000-sf structure is being touted as Mercer Crossing's centerpiece. The plans for the largest building, which had broken ground in December, now includes a five-story garage and has been renamed from Three Hickory Centre to Four Hickory Centre. Jim Gwin of Houston is the architect for all of the structures.

Also coming this year is a tech building that's still on Mercer Crossing's drawing boards, Swearingen tells GlobeSt.com. Though it's a building without a name for now, it will add about 240,000 sf in a tech-driven design that will be constructed to the west of Luna Road. A groundbreaking month has yet to be set.